


Gemini Rose

by aderyn



Series: Garden [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Bullets, Character Study, Flowers, Language of Flowers, Mary's Past, Names
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-15
Updated: 2014-06-15
Packaged: 2018-02-04 17:42:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1787542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A gift, her mother said, gave her the pistils.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gemini Rose

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> A very happy birthday, with love, to Jude.

 

**_Lavender (luck, devotion)_ **

She can smell summer, always could. A gift, her mother said, gave her the pistils, the prayers to Mary, the repentances she came to disdain, devotions.

She’s tattooed in her twentieth year, when her mother’s gone and there’s no-one, an odd cross strung with calyces; studies on scholarships, pre-med, linguistics, that summer kills the man who’d kill her, alone at night in her childhood bed.

Shakes.

“Kill for us instead,” another man says, not long after, shows her a grave with her name, “you're dead. You can't go back.”

_Pray for us mother, now and in the hour._

**_Red Tulip (believe me)_ **

She goes back. She’s past thirty and British and John Watson is lost.

“Three continents,” she says, “why only three.”

"Another one here,” he says; good with his tongue, swears passably in Pashto, says her new name slow; _doesn’t know_ , sees in her lipstick-red, antiseptic, loaves and cats and saner adventure.

_I love you like a false cognate, like petals folded in prayer, like all the clever things I know._

**_Pink Rose (please believe me)_ **

It’s winter and her child is dead, or will be if she doesn’t learn-- to live, forgive, be forgiven.

_I love you._

_I am who I am._

_I’m sorry._

_Are you._

She clutches John’s hand pink-cheeked, two-hearted.

“My girl,” Sherlock Holmes says.

_I’d take back the bullet._

**Author's Note:**

> [Gemini Rose](http://www.rose-gardening-made-easy.com/gemini-rose.html)   
> [Lavender](http://www.paintingandart.com/amazing-photos-of-lavender-field-in-france/)   
> [Lavender](http://www.windyhillslavender.com/Lavender___Oil.html)   
> [Red Tulip](http://viamyviewfinder.blogspot.com/2011/04/red-and-yellow-tulip.html)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Cover Art for aderyn's Garden Series (2) Gemini Rose](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1805323) by [Hamstermoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hamstermoon/pseuds/Hamstermoon)




End file.
